Sunday, November 26, 2006

The verdict on Microsoft's Windows Defender is clear- you need to download Windows Defender today.

Microsoft's Windows Defender is expected to address at some of the spyware and virus loopholes in the Windows operating system family. Though some (including me) would object to Microsoft releasing the Microsoft Windows Defender as a separate product, I am happy to get at least some security updates to the vulnerable Microsoft Windows operating system

Benchmarking tests for Microsoft Windows Defender :

I have downloaded Microsoft Windows Defender and run it on a Sony Vaio laptop running Windows XP Professional. As part of the benchmarking test with Microsoft Windows Defender,I have deliberately installed some spyware,complicated rootkits and good ol' viruses on the laptop.

Results of the benchmarking test for Microsoft Windows Defender: (Microsoft Windows Defender is still in Beta)

The antispyware benchmarking test had Microsoft Windows Defender doing almost as good as McAfee and Norton antivirus products. However, none of the products including Microsoft Windows Defender, McAfee and Norton antivirus did a good job of identifying the rootkits on the computer. In comparison, Kaspersky antivirus seemed to do a better job at at least identifying the rootkits on the benchmarking test.

A more complex benchmarking test spanning various Windows vulnerabilities will be done next week at a Fortune 50 client- I will let you know the results of the benchmarking test and how well Microsoft Windows Defender performed in comparison to the commercial Windows antispyware products

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Norton antivirus is (in)famous for making your PC run (or rather crawl) like a tortoise. Why does Norton antivirus really consume so much disk space and memory?

I really fail to understand why Norton antivirus and to some extent McAfee antivirus software are such memory hoggers. I mean the antivirus logic is entirely heuristic based and uses standard registry entries to identify antivirus threats.

I can understand intention based antivirus software as being memory hoggers. But the intention based antivirus software I have reviewed consume less memory and even less disk space than commercial antivirus software such as Norton and McAfee antivirus software.

However, the current use of onion routers is primarily as a gateway for hackers :-) I need real commercial support, funding and more research is needed to make the equivalent of onion Tor Networks used in the right way.

Onion routers are in the news again these days. While onion routers really help in developing secure networks- they also are misused by hackers all around the world.

As with any technology, if onion routers are used well, it could go a long way in developing a secure internet , but onion routers could also be an invitation for hackers to use the untraceable IP feature to hack other networks.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

EMC is rapidly expanding its offerings beyond data storage to include information security and data backup competencies.Obviously, storage software, network data security and data recovery software services are growing way faster than the traditional physical data storage business of EMC and EMC, the data storage guys,want to rapidly get into this space.